Skip to main content
 

Connection Trailblazers Programme launched

The new Connectors-UK Connection Trailblazers will offer organisations a £20,000 grant and support to help you develop and transform your connection practice.

Over time, our society has become more disconnected. The evidence shows we are lonelier, less trusting, and more unequal than ever before. Three-quarters of the public say the UK feels divided, with more than one in four saying it feels very divided. Across class, age and ethnicity, there can often be a sense that we are living separate lives.

Community organisations are leading the fightback against these trends. They exist to bring places together – providing safe and welcoming spaces, offering inclusive services, putting communities in charge of their neighbourhoods.

In the face of huge challenges – from austerity to Brexit, Covid to cost of living – community organisations have been connecting local people and providing hope for the future.

But we know how hard ongoing crisis conditions make it just to keep going. What’s more, funding is increasingly focused on short-term service delivery, rather than enabling organisations to work with their communities to build connection over the long term.

How our Connection Trailblazers Programme can help

Connectors-UK therefore aims to provide organisations with the space to step off the delivery treadmill, and really focus on connection. Supported by the National Lottery Community Fund, we are a partnership of the leading membership organisations supporting community organisations across the UK – Locality, Development Trusts Association Scotland, Development Trusts Association Wales, and Development Trusts Northern Ireland.

We know lots of our members will have great ideas they want to develop, which just haven’t aligned with public sector contract demands or funders’ project priorities. There will be tried and tested methods that have been put on the back burner; or approaches successfully used in one area of work that are waiting to be scaled into others.

We’re offering organisations a mix of funding and support to help you develop and transform your connection practice. The support offer consists of:

  • A grant of £20,000. We envisage this being used to do things like free up staff capacity and backfill roles to enable you to further your connection work. But we are very flexible about how it might be used, so are keen to hear creative ideas for how this money might support transformative community connection.
  • 12 days of relationship manager support. This will be provided by the relevant national partner organisation to support your organisation to develop your idea and overcome barriers. There will be additional support to draw out learning and measure impact.
  • Funding to cover a senior leader’s time to participate in an exciting new leadership development programme, to develop our Trailblazers as a cohort of community connection leaders, who are able to drive local systems change and advocate on a national stage.

Eligibility criteria

This programme is open to all paid members of Locality, Development Trusts Association Scotland, Development Trusts Association Wales, and Development Trusts Northern Ireland.

Our goal is to support a broad range of projects across the country to help them build community connection in their neighbourhoods. In so doing, as well as achieving practical change in a number of places, we hope to showcase the connection potential of community organisations, help us understand what’s needed to unlock it, and inspire others across our networks.

The programme is built around the following four principles:

  • Bridging relationships: we want to support community organisations to strengthen relationships between people from different backgrounds and with different experiences of life.
  • Community power: we want to help this broad-based community connection become a platform for change, so people can positively shape the future of their neighbourhoods.
  • Equity: we want to support community organisations to create this powerful community connection in neighbourhoods and with communities who experience structural disadvantage.
  • Transforming practice: we want to support community organisations to build from where they currently are, whether that’s trialling a new approach, or developing existing ones in bigger or different ways.

How to apply

The deadline for applications for this programme was 9am on Monday 2 December.

You can find more details about the programme, eligibility and the selection process, along with a copy of the application questions, in our FAQ guide.

If you have any questions, please contact rosy.hearn@locality.org.uk.